C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[davidb86]

No I saw the accurate forum quote of the post.  In tmaekler's reply while I saw the words "one simple system" in quotes, I did not think that was a quote of tobijon, but a generic "Air Quote" which captured the flavor of tobijon's "shouldn't be too hard" which every suggestion for aurora always seems to indicate. 

You are correct that I am in the Central time zone, and now that you have pointed out, i understand what tobijon was trying to say.

[TMaekler]

I am just now reading the posts along my "quote". Think I can clear up the misunderstanding here.

My "one simple system" wasn't intended to be a quote from tobijon, it was me describing the "5-second-increment-system" as "one simple system". So I wasn't quoting him; just taking a shortcut so I don't have to write a lot of stuff to explain what I mean, and subtextually saying, that it is not a simple system (coming from a programmers background myself). So sorry for shortening it too much and thereby becoming misunderstandable.

[tobijon]

but that's just the thing, despite that you're still assuming that I considered it a simple system which I don't, and if you read what I said I wasn't advocating changing it.

[Deutschbag]

Maximum Wealth Balance

In Conventional Start games, races often build up a huge wealth reserve due to a lack of costs. This removes wealth as a consideration for many years and takes away meaningful decisions.

Therefore, in C# Aurora, a race's wealth balance can never exceed double the annual wealth. Any excess beyond that is assumed to be spent on improving the lives of its citizens.

I forget if unrest has been addressed before -- but perhaps this excess wealth being funneled into consumer goods could be modeled in some way with regards to unrest. Reducing civil unrest or so on, in proportion to the amount of money being diverted into public spending.

[Hazard]

Note, having 200 units total of xenoarcheology components does not equate to a 100% chance. It's approximately equal to ((1/72)^72)% chance of failing if I remember my math right. So pretty much zero, but not actually being zero you can just end up rolling really, really poorly.

[Froggiest1982]

Referring to the below, I understand the concept which is fair enough. However, could that be confined to Conventional Races only? A sort of mechanic that disappears after you discover the trans-Newtonian minerals or probably another particular tech such as Jump Gates. Even if the player can manage that sort of things (but still annoying moving forward when cash is meaningful) I am more afraid on the AI management. Thoughts?

Maximum Wealth Balance
In Conventional Start games, races often build up a huge wealth reserve due to a lack of costs. This removes wealth as a consideration for many years and takes away meaningful decisions.
Therefore, in C# Aurora, a race's wealth balance can never exceed double the annual wealth. Any excess beyond that is assumed to be spent on improving the lives of its citizens.

[Garfunkel]

I thought NPRs do not have to worry about wealth at all.

[tobijon]

Note, having 200 units total of xenoarcheology components does not equate to a 100% chance. It's approximately equal to ((1/72)^72)% chance of failing if I remember my math right. So pretty much zero, but not actually being zero you can just end up rolling really, really poorly.

yes, but entropy is on your side for that one 


On the wealth mechanic: wouldn't it also be better for there to be more things that cost money, like terraforming for example, wouldn't that be kind of expensive?

[Steve Walmsley]

Generally speaking, wealth is usually irrelevant for conventional races and very relevant for TN races. I don't want the conventional period to take away meaningful decisions from the subsequent early TN period. In those rare situations where a TN race has a large excess of wealth, whether that maximum is 2x or 10x is only going to make a significant difference if that race suddenly changes from low to high expenditure relative to annual income, which is unlikely. I don't want to add more uses for wealth as that could disrupt the current balance, so a cap is a simple solution that doesn't disrupt anything.

The other option I considered was having wealth tied to TN, so that wealth was multiplied by (Starting Conventional Factories - Current Conventional Factories) / Starting Conventional Factories, but that could have other consequences I can't foresee at the moment.

[Jorgen_CAB]

While we are on the subject of wealth... perhaps add a cost of commercial ships in state service in terms of a small wealth cost symbolizing the cost of sallaries and maintenance needed for these ships. I think everything need to have some cost, commercial ships should not get a pass.

[King-Salomon]

I don't want to add more uses for wealth as that could disrupt the current balance, so a cap is a simple solution that doesn't disrupt anything.

The other option I considered was having wealth tied to TN, so that wealth was multiplied by (Starting Conventional Factories - Current Conventional Factories) / Starting Conventional Factories, but that could have other consequences I can't foresee at the moment.

I would go for a solution were the Conventional Factories are using wealth to a point were most (but not all) of the wealth is used up at the beginning...
with the converting of the factories the wealth is starting to come in and can be saved for later (something like a boost for the whole economy with the invention of TN-tech)

a (mostly) conventional society would struggle to save wealth - invest in ground forces etc but it would not be impossible - especially if they start building financial center to pay for the land forces they want to deploy in the conventional years...

a converted economy would save some wealth at the beginning (but not as much as atm) but would have to react to rising wealth useage through ships/armys after some years...

having a hard cap at the gamestart I am not sure about... building financial centers at the starting phase is a strategy too - one that wouldn't be reasonable with a wealth-cap...

[alex_brunius]

About wealth... Maybe a wealth surplus could slightly increase growth rate or there could be an option to automatically subsidize Commercial Shipping Companies with the surplus?

Or another option is it gives a small boost to production/mining/research output ( Say a 20% wealth surplus boost performance by 2%? )

That way it wouldn't feel like a total waste, but still as a not optimal way to spend the wealth.

[chrislocke2000]

The wealth cap looks to me to be a reasonble solution to the problem. A couple of points:

- Perhaps when reserching improved wealth this could add to the maximum cap or there could be a separate research line for this.
- I like the idea of running a budget surplus that means you get higher growth rates / production bonuses as a way to entice even conventional starts to be careful with money.
- Perhaps finance centres could also add a quantum to the maximum cap to give another reason to build more of them
- When it comes to war reperations I'd be frustrated if these got considered in the cap. I guess the whole point of these is to address the rebalancing of significant expenditure for the war so would be annoying if a chunk of money received just disappeared. In a recent campaign it's these payments that have actually been keeping my economy going.

[Rabid_Cog]

The wealth cap is fine for a stopgap solution for the sake of getting C# Aurora tested and released. For a longer term solution, we need to define exactly what wealth *is*. We can safely assume its not just money, but rather represents the entire industrial capacity of your empire, all the non-TN manufacturing, services, etc. A "Finance Center" is not actually a New York Stock Exchange, but rather a commercial district where small business can flourish and provide goods and services to the public as well for state consumption. It would also reasonably include all TN minerals not in state hands (both % from your mines as well as CMC's that you dont buy).

If we see Wealth as "Industrial Capacity", it makes sense that you can't save it up. If there is a company that can build toilet seats for 4 spacecraft in a year and you build 0 spacecraft in a year, it does not follow that you can now build 8 spacecraft's worth of toilets the following year, you can most likely build 0 as the company has gone bankrupt due to having no income for a year.

You can conserve resources to some extent, building up stockpiles, but there is a very low limit to how much of that is feasable. The economy only functions if it flows.

[Father Tim]

I would go for a solution were the Conventional Factories are using wealth to a point were most (but not all) of the wealth is used up at the beginning...

The Conv->TN Wealth bloom seems to be coming from the low production efficiency of Conventional Industry (1/10th CF, 1/10th Mine, 1/20th Fuel Refinery, etc.) when Wealth costs are still based on output.  If 50,000 workers generate 10 Wealth, but only mine 1 ton of TNE (and thus spend only 1 Wealth) due to the inefficiency of Conventional Industry, they generate 900% profits.

To me, it seems the solution is to charge Conventional Industry five-to-ten times the Wealth per ton of TNE mined, or constructed, or refined.  Pre-TNE empires would no longer be generating such enormous wealth in the first place, and wouldn't need their treasuries capped.